WAR TIME AND AFTER. 259 



almost thoroughbred. They never seem to lose hounds 

 for a moment, and I take it they carry a plan in their 

 heads of all the bogs and the exact placings of the gates 

 in, the wire fences, for were it otherwise they could not keep in 

 touch as they do, and be able to tell one afterwards wkLah 

 hounds were leading at any particular point, which hit the line 

 off at a. check, and which actually caught, the fox. The 

 stranger going among the mountains must follow the Master, 

 the kennel huntsman, or a farmer who is taking a line of kb) 

 own, but he must never lose touch with his pilot, or he may 

 find himself in difficulties. If, however, he sticks to someone 

 who reially knows he will find that most, of his galloping is ovea- 

 fine old turf, and very seldom on heath.er. He will have steep 

 ascents and descents, but all are practicable, for the paths 

 wind up and down the sides of the hills, and are used all day 

 and every day by the farmers looking after their sheep. 



And here I must interpose two refleotionsi which this moim- 

 tain hunting suggests. The first is that for the hills no horsie 

 is £o good as a thoroughbred, and the second is that Major 

 Davies' cross-bred Welsh and English hounds can hunt a fox 

 over sheep foiled ground in a manner tliat I never saw achieved 

 by any pack of English hounds. As regards the th.oroughbred 

 I do not mean a racehorse, nor a vecry young horse, but the 

 stamp which, no matter how his early life may have been spent, 

 has, in the ocurse of time, become a steady hunter. Such 

 horses have more endurance than commoner-bred animals, and 

 are extremely surefooted. They do not as a rule get nervous 

 when a storm comes on, and their smooth, easy action is an 

 enormous asset to the rider. If an actual stud-book horse 

 is not available, one with a great deal of breeding and many 

 of the qualities of a thoroughbred is to be preferred, and about 

 the best, and surest footed I ever rode in the mountain coixatry 

 was a shapely fifteen-three horse by a thoroughbred out of a 

 Dartmoor pony. The cobs and po.nie® which the farmers ride 

 do wonderfully well in tlie high country, and as long as hounds 

 do not really race they can carry their riders well up with the 

 pack. These little horses have for the most part been bred 

 on the hills, and have been ridden all over them ever since 

 they were first saddled. They are therefore not only active 

 but ecxceedingly trustworthy, and it is said that they have 



